Akané, the scarlet girl

How can we be well if nature is mistreated and wounded? A sensitive allegory about what connects us to living things.

A vast forest stretches across Mount Takara in Japan. Akio’s father is its guardian. Akio likes to accompany him along the narrow paths where the animals have

fun. But one day, the rhythm of life is shaken by the iron machines that carelessly dig into the ground. Soon silence reigns throughout the wounded forest. What poisons have they buried? At the foot of a sick maple tree, Akio discovers a girl burning with fever. He takes her back to the family home and heals her. But her condition worsens as she keeps talking about her maple tree. Then he understands: the tree is a part of her; she must save it too. Since then, Akio and Akané, the scarlet girl, have never left each other’s side. Together, day after day, they watch over the great forest and their tree, which has become vigorous. So goes the legend of how a little maple tree became big.

SPIRIT OF THE BOOK

In her text, Marie Sellier embraces the cause of the link to living things, which she sees as the origin of and an essential condition for any possibility of harmony in the world. While her sensitive text places the story in the register of the marvelous, Minna Yu’s left-handed illustration gives the story a form that brings it closer to a reality full of the spontaneity and freshness of the world of childhood.